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Manafort's Russia intrigue continues with Senate hearing

AP

Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, will be asked to face the Senate Judiciary Committee for questioning related to the larger Russia probes, specifically the government's oversight for registering as a foreign lobbyist, which Manafort has done. But this is just the latest in the Manafort intrigue: earlier this week it was revealed he attended Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 election, along with Jared Kushner.

What remains unclear is whether Manafort even knew that the June 9 meeting was with a Russian lawyer, particularly one who was reportedly promising "damaging" information on Hillary Clinton. (But the email's subject line included "Russia" and although he wasn't included on them, they were likely forwarded to him.) Manafort's spokesman declined to comment.

The intrigue: The timing of Manafort's work with the campaign and how he has subsequently disclosed information about his meetings and work. He joined the Trump campaign on March 29 and was promoted to campaign chairman on May 19 — just three weeks before Trump Jr.'s meeting.

Although he's entangled in the larger web created by the Russia probes, Manafort previously disclosed this meeting to congressional investigators before Trump Jr. leaked his emails — but he wasn't required to disclose the content of it.

Now the question is why did he attend Trump Jr.'s meeting at all? Given he was just a few weeks into his role as chairman (and considering he has an apartment in Trump Tower, where the meeting was held) it's possible he felt an obligation to attend, especially after his boss's son requested as much. And while it's possible he wasn't aware that a Russian government lawyer would be there, it's hard to believe he didn't know that the meeting would be Russia related in some way, considering the email chain's subject line alone.

But those close to Manafort maintain he's done nothing wrong — in fact, they think Manafort's involvement in this whole thing is completely unlike that of Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner, who was also at the meeting. And the same goes for how they view his retroactive registration as a foreign agent. Jason Maloni, Manafort's spokesman, told Vanity Fair:

"He's cooperative, but he's not cooperating in the 'cooperating witness' sense. He engaged with the Department of Justice's Foreign Agent Registration Act unit back in September, and sought their counsel about taking the appropriate steps to be registered. This started before the election, before Mueller was ever in place."

Manafort resigned from Trump's campaign on August 19, just 3 months after becoming chairman, after NYT broke news of his firm's work with Ukrainian oligarchs. Since then:

The statement came the say day that financial documents confirmed Manafort's firm received $1.2 million from his clients — payments that some Ukrainian officials believed were part of a larger scandal involving former President Viktor Yanukovych's pro-Russian political party and Manafort's firm.

They lobbied for and set up meetings with Ukrainian political officials in an attempt to influence the campaign based on their pro-Russian interests, specifically for former Russian President Yanukovych.

The registration revealed that he was involved with the firm's lobbying work, attending meetings and offering consulting.

He retroactively filed forms with the Department of Justice disclosing his work as a foreign agent for a Ukrainian political party.

Note: It wasn't illegal for Manafort to file his disclosure form retroactively — that would require clear intent — and as Maloni previously told Vanity Fair, he started this work back in September.

Ukrainian prosecutors announced they found no evidence of illicit payments to Manafort and his signature wasn't on the payment ledger, from the news that emerged in April.

What's next: Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley (who's also the Republican chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee) announced yesterday they plan to question Manafort, noting the committee will issue a subpoena if he's uncooperative. But as has been mentioned before, those close to Manafort say he has been cooperative and will continue to be — he's just waiting on the committee to give him a date for the hearing.

The FBI, Congress and Special Counsel Bob Mueller are also questioning Manafort as part of the Russia probe, per the Washington Post.

A White House olive branch: no plan to fire Mueller

After a weekend at war with the Mueller investigation, the White House is extending an olive branch. Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer handling the probe, plans to issue this statement:

“In response to media speculation and related questions being posed to the Administration, the White House yet again confirms that the President is not considering or discussing the firing of the Special Counsel, Robert Mueller.”

Why it matters: The White House strategy had been to cooperate with Mueller. So this is an effort to turn down the temperature after a weekend of increasingly personal provocations aimed at the special counsel.

John Dowd, a member of Trump's legal team, said Saturday that the investigation should be shut down "on the merits."

And Trump tweeted: "Why does the Mueller team have 13 hardened Democrats, some big Crooked Hillary supporters, and Zero Republicans? Another Dem recently added...does anyone think this is fair? And yet, there is NO COLLUSION!"

Trump's trade plan that would blow up the WTO

For months, President Donald Trump has been badgering his economic advisors to give him broad, unilateral authority to raise tariffs — a move that would all but break the World Trade Organization.

His favorite word: “reciprocal.” He’s always complaining to staff about the fact that the U.S. has much lower tariffs on some foreign goods than other countries have on the same American-made goods. The key example is cars: The European Union has a 10 percent tariff on all cars, including those manufactured in America, and China hits all foreign-made cars with 25 percent tariffs. But the U.S. only charges 2.5 percent for foreign cars we import.

Trump and ascendant nationalist economic advisor Peter Navarro think this is wildly unfair. So the president wants Congress to pass a bill to let him raise tariffs to reciprocal levels, according to three sources with direct knowledge.

One source familiar with Trump's thinking told me that Trump doesn't want to raise tariffs — he wants to use the new power this bill would give him as leverage to force other countries to lower theirs. Some of his advisers, including Gary Cohn, have told associates this won't work and could lead to a trade war. CNBC's Eamon Javers was the first to report this development.

Trump initially asked senior officials, including then-Staff Secretary Rob Porter, to draft an executive order to let him do it unilaterally. Porter and others explained he couldn't legally do that by himself. So now, Trump is asking for a bill.

Trump's idea would effectively break the WTO. One of the core WTO principles — which has underpinned globalization and trade for 70 years — is an idea called "most favored nation status."​ Countries that belong to the WTO have all agreed to charge the same tariff rate for imports from all other WTO members.

Wealthier nations like the U.S. have tended to commit to lower tariff rates than poorer nations. The U.S. can re-negotiate tariff rates, but is supposed to go through the WTO process — and whatever rate they re-negotiate they have to give to everybody else. Trump doesn't like that. He wants to match tariffs nation-by-nation, product-by-product.

This is probably dead-on-arrival in Congress: Most Republicans on the Hill are free-traders and nearly universally opposed to Trump's tariffs. They won't get behind this. And a source familiar with Trump's legislative affairs team's thinking says such a bill has little chance of success. Trump, however, thinks the idea is a no-brainer. He mused aloud to staff in an Oval Office meeting last week, "Who could be against reciprocal?"

Why it matters: Trump is just getting started on his hardline trade mission. Gary Cohn and Rob Porter were among the few in the White House who would fight for free trade policies. Once they’re gone, the most influential voices on trade will be economic nationalists (with the possible exception of Larry Kudlow; we’ll have to wait and see if he’ll start off his tenure as chief economic advisor by going to war with the president over trade.)

What else to watch for: Aggressive tariffs against China. As Politico first reported, when Trump's team presented him with a package of tariffs that would target the equivalent of $30 billion a year in Chinese imports, Trump told them he wanted even bigger tariffs.

Axios has further learned that in an Oval Office meeting on Thursday, Trump told Kevin Hassett, the chair of his Council of Economic Advisers: "Kevin, you've gotta make the number bigger." Hassett told Trump he'd have to go away and study the potential impacts of these larger tariffs against China, according to a source familiar with the interaction. Two sources with direct knowledge tell me the administration's current tentative plan is to potentially put tariffs on hundreds of Chinese products by the end of March.